When I’m thinking poetically, I imagine MoJo as a massive hacks and hackers mind meld. Developers and journalists working together in a gritty, real-world, open-to-the-public lab. Answering each other’s silly questions. Playing together. And making news differently. More Hacks and hackers meld minds
Category: mojo
Dan Sinker joins Mozilla as MoJo lead
I’m excited to announce that Dan Sinker will soon be joining us to lead the Knight Mozilla News Innovation Challenge (MoJo). MoJo is already kicking butt. It’s about to kick even more. More Dan Sinker joins Mozilla as MoJo lead
Interview: Susan Crawford on MoJo
I asked open internet activist Susan Crawford what is blowing her mind in the world of online journalism. Continuing on a theme, she said:””I love the way Andy Carvin is serving as a one man band covering the Middle East,” she said. “He’s got video coming in. He’s got people acting as his producers, editors and commentators. That’s blowing my mind.” I asked her to say more: More Interview: Susan Crawford on MoJo
Interview: Boston Globe’s Moriarty
There has been alot of talk on the MoJo list about whether Knight Mozilla fellows will really be able to innovate inside large news orgs. I asked Jeff Moriarty what kind of environment fellows will be landing in at the Boston Globe: “We have reporters and developers working across desks from each other. Everybody is now involved in every platform.” As VP Digital, Jeff has really pushed the integration of journalists and developers. I asked him to say more about how this works: More Interview: Boston Globe’s Moriarty
Interview: @acarvin, twitter, revolution
Riffing on Amanda’s comment on my last post, I decided to ask NPR’s Andy Carvin how he’s been using online conversation to cover recent revolutions in the the Arab world. “I’m using twitter to produce journalism on an open source model,” he said. “I find experts who chime in in a very public fashion. They help me do everything from identifying landmines to translating obscure dialects.” I asked Andy to say more: More Interview: @acarvin, twitter, revolution
Interview: DocumentCloud’s Hickman
I asked DocumentCloud’s Amanda Hickman to respond to the question: “How can we reinvent online news discussions?” “We do a good job getting people to comment on things like the royal wedding. But we all have insights on things like how our city works or where our food comes from,” she said. “News could be doing more to get audiences weighing in on real policy issues like these.” I asked Amanda to say more: More Interview: DocumentCloud’s Hickman
Interview: Schoenborn, news + comments
I asked Knight Foundation web lead Eric Schoenborn about what’s broken with comments, news and the web. He said: “We need to get online discussion past the low common denominator trolls. We need a way to get people who actually care about democracy engaging online.” The second MoJo innovation challenge is all about this: asking developers and designers to re-imagine online discourse around the news. Eric said more: More Interview: Schoenborn, news + comments
The challenge: reinvent ‘TV news’ online
Recently, we’ve seen a huge change in video online. The advent of web native <video> makes it possible to mash up moving images with social media, tie clips to data from across the web or, more simply, create simple transcript-based interfaces for navigating long pieces of video. Yet, despite the these capabilities, we’ve seen almost nothing in the way of new kinds of storytelling. Telling stories with video online today looks pretty much the same as it did when I used to shoot local TV news 20 years ago. More The challenge: reinvent ‘TV news’ online
MoJo Interview: popcorn, video and news
I asked Mozilla Web Made Movies Lead Brett Gaylor excites him about news and video on the web today. He said: “Open video can help re-establish journalism as the fifth estate.” As the first Knight Mozilla news challenge topic is about video, I asked Brett to say more about this: More MoJo Interview: popcorn, video and news
MoJo interview: Al Jazeera + innovation
I asked Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Nanabhay what excites him about news innovation on the web today. He said: “I’m excited by the sheer velocity of change going on. The web has taken the concept of live news and stretched it to the limit”. As a part of our joint work on the MoJo, I asked Mohamed to say more about this: More MoJo interview: Al Jazeera + innovation